With the summer release of Man of Steel, we can’t help but wonder how the latest Superman, played by Henry Cavill, stacks up against his predecessors. For decades, it seemed that Christopher Reeve was the perfect archetype for Kal-El, son of Jor-El. But a generation before, the small screen had the popular black-and-white TV series starring George Reeves.

More recently, TV offered us Tom Welling of Smallville, who had been the first TV Superman since Dean Cain in the 90’s. Of course, we can’t forget that this all started with comic books, where there have been several incarnations of Kal-El, including a Superman that had a boxing match against Muhammad Ali – IN SPACE!

To help you make a fair assessment, we’ve included a link here to a few classic episodes of the animated Superman, preserved for digital posterity by the Internet Archive.

So now we have to know. Which Superman is your favorite?

Friday Download: Superman

1. Son of Krypton / 1941
2. Mechanical Monsters / 1941
3. Arctic Giant / 1942

Image credit: Internet Archive